Reading for My Life is an exhilarating selection of 50 John Leonard reviews, essays and speeches. His erudition on a dizzying array of subjects is never offered for its own sake. Instead, it fuels the infectious enthusiasm of Leonard's standing invitation to join him on a roller-coaster ride in the amusement park of contemporary culture.
The book contains a healthy sampling from nearly all of the many publications that featured Leonard's work (of how many writers can it be said they wrote happily for National Review and the Nation?). There are brief reviews of novels from authors like Don DeLillo and Doris Lessing, and extended appraisals of the works of Günter Grass, Thomas Pynchon, Norman Mailer and others, alongside reviews of nonfiction that include memoirs as diverse as Richard Nixon's Six Crises and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. Throughout, the vitality of Leonard's prose helps his incisive criticism withstand the passage of time.
Leonard didn't confine himself to cultural criticism--literary or otherwise. In his politics, he was a liberal, as demonstrated by his informed, passionate essays on why socialism never came to the U.S. and America's response to the 9/11 attacks, among others.
Reading for My Life concludes with a series of warmhearted tributes from family and friends like Toni Morrison and Victor Navasky, all paying homage to a man who married a keen intelligence to a generous spirit. "The books we love, love us back," John Leonard once wrote. There is wisdom, wit, and yes, ample helpings of love in the words gathered here--a celebratory summing up of an incomparable critic's life's work. --Harvey Freedenberg